Sawka Runs Away With Pga Junior

ELLINGTON — Steve Sawka knew right away that the drive was too far left. By the time it came down, in the woods left of the fairway, he had been to his bag and back and teed up another ball.

The ninth hole at Ellington Ridge Country Club -- a par-4, 431-yard dogleg right -- doesn't allow for hooks. After a short search, Sawka found it behind some shrubs 200 yards from the flag and 10 up a hill.

"But it didn't phase me," he said after saving par on the way to a 4-under-par 68, a 36-hole total of 3-under 141 and an eight-stroke victory Monday in the Connecticut Section PGA Junior Championship. "Not with the way I was playing."

Sawka's second drive (which he'd take, lying three, if he couldn't play the first) split the fairway, but it didn't matter. He chopped the first ball 25 yards right of the green, pitched to 25 feet and sank a putt that broke 5 feet left to right.

But as awkward as it was the save typified Sawka's final 18 holes. He hit 14 greens in regulation, but missed four birdie putts of 12 feet or less. On the last two greens he missed, his approaches got to a foot of the cup. The first, on the par-3 fourth, Sawka chipped in from 35 feet for birdie.

"I was just trying to get that one close," said Sawka, 16, from East Windsor. "But not that close."

He parred the next three holes, birdied the 13th and 15th and parred the last three to hold off Tom Gilbert of Thompson (80-69 -- 149) and Steve Keller of Woodstock (78-72 -- 150).

Jennifer Cieslak of Windham (90) was the girls' winner, gaining -- with Sawka -- a berth in the National PGA Junior Championship Aug. 25-28 in Palm Beach, Fla.

"I started to have hope during my second round," Gilbert said, "but remembered who I was chasing. He wasn't coming back. Not here."

Sawka, who last year lost this tournament by a stroke to his brother, John, has been playing at Ellington Ridge six years. His family has had a membership there for 13.

And so, while he scrutinized the scoreboard after 18 holes and again after 27, he knew all along what he had to do.

"I had to take advantage of the course," said Sawka, who is an incoming junior at Avon Old Farms. "A couple guys [Joe Cerino of Hamden and Ryan Dranginis of West Simsbury shot first-round 74s] were close, but none who knew the course."

Sawka positioned himself to the left of the fairway off the tee on the par-5 13th, a dogleg right, and from there had a clear shot -- from 215 yards -- over a long pond and to the green. Playing partner T.J. McDonald, meanwhile, drove to the middle. His second shot, a shorter one than Sawka's, found the fat of the pond.

On the 174-yard 15th, Sawka put a 4-iron to the far right of the green and drained a 33-foot uphill putt for birdie. McDonald (who finished tied for eighth) went for the stick on a hill to the left of the green, landed it but had it roll off. He bogeyed.

"He was a steamroller," said McDonald of Avon, a former teammate of Sawka at Old Farms, "getting better as he went.